Once the dazzling neon lights fades and the CGI effects are gone, there is nothing much left to call a movie...

Rating: 6/10 (22 October 2013)

I must admit that "Pacific Rim" was all that I expected it to be, but also all that I feared it to be. The movie is another "Skyline"; all spectacular CGI visual effects and a shallow mockery of a storyline. Everything here just screams textbook step-by-step heroic story.
The world is threatened by an extraterrestrial superior life form that comes to Earth through a rift in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. The nations of Earth put aside their differences and feeble politics to unite against this outer-wordly threat. And they build massive war machines that are driven by people to fight these gargantuan reptilian invaders.
That was basically the entire storyline, and for some reason director Guillermo del Toro needed 131 minutes to tell a story that could have been told in one-third of the spent time.
Right from the very beginning, you know the exact outcome of the movie, and there isn't a single surprise throughout the entire movie, which was sort of too much in a singular easy to be one step in front of the movie at all times. This was what the movie suffered from. Well, that and the appalling fact that the movie was a very weak excuse of a storyline.
Which leads me on to the characters. The characters in the movie were actually more like caricatures than actual characters. They were wooden and had really awkward and often bad dialogue to work with. And the people behind these caricatures were doing alright jobs given the nature of the movie, but I can't really say that there was any one performance that stood out as being overly memorable compared to the others in the movie.
That being said, then I will say that the CGI special effects in "Pacific Rim" is off the charts, and it looks nothing short of spectacular. The creatures were very realistic and moved about in a very believable way. Although they were a bit on the simplistic side in terms of creativity in the creature design. The war machines were nice as well, although I think the whole part about them needing two pilots to work in symbiosis was a little bit stupid.
If you are looking for a Sci-Fi movie that requires absolutely nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, from your brain, then "Pacific Rim" is a great way to spend 131 minutes in dazzling special effects, CGI galore and fluorescent neon lighting.
I am rating "Pacific Rim" a 6 out of 10 stars, purely because of the CGI effects that is dazzling and a real treat for the eyes. This is indeed a movie suitable for a day where you are nurturing a hangover, feeling sick, or just need to lay on the couch with your brain sent away on holiday. "Pacific Rim" is a guy's movie all the way through...